Education News
Five ways to improve literacy learning (that work better than high-stakes tests)
The following letter from Sandy Hayes, president of the National Council of Teachers of English to organization members, supports a moratorium on the high-stakes consequences of standardized tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten made the call for a moratorium in April because teachers haven't had enough time to properly absorb and create curriculum around the standards. A number of organizations and education activists from different sides of the education debate have supported the call, though Jeb Bush's Chiefs for Change, a group of former and current state education superintendents, opposed it. Hayes also details five ways to help improve literacy that would be better investments than more high-stakes tests.
Read full article >>Cowboy-style cap gun gets 5-year-old suspended from school in Calvert County
A kindergartner who brought a cowboy-style cap gun onto his Calvert County school bus was suspended for 10 days after showing a friend the orange-tipped toy, which he had tucked inside his backpack on his way to school, according to his family and a lawyer.
Read full article >>U-Va. astronomer wins $1 million 'Nobel of the East' Prize
University of Virginia astronomer John Hawley, and Steven Balbus, a former U-Va. colleague who is now at the University of Oxford, are co-winners of the Shaw Prize, which is commonly known as the "Nobels of the East."
Read full article >>St. Mary’s College trustees plan to discuss college president’s future
When Joseph Urgo became president of St. Mary’s College of Maryland three years ago, trustees considered him a devoted scholar who could steer the small, public honors college toward greater financial stability.
Read full article >>Gray administration wants to establish unified lottery for D.C. public and charter schools
The Gray administration is seeking to establish a unified enrollment lottery for the city’s traditional and charter schools in time to determine admissions for the 2014-15 school year, officials said Thursday.
Read full article >>Tea party groups mobilizing against Common Core education overhaul
Tea party groups over the past few weeks have suddenly and successfully pressured Republican governors to reassess their support for a rare bipartisan initiative backed by President Obama to overhaul the nation’s public schools.
Read full article >>The Learning Network: Found Poem Favorite | ‘Native’
The Learning Network: Reading Club | Our Favorite Student Comments on Digital Distractions
Business community shows support for preschool expansion in letter to Obama
More than 300 national business leaders signed an open letter in support of greater federal investment in preschool that was sent to Congress and the White House this week and presented Thursday to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Read full article >>The Choice Blog: Colleges Report 2013 Admission Yields and Wait-List Offers
14 Fairfax students win National Merit scholarships
Fourteen Fairfax County schools students received National Merit scholarships financed by colleges and universities around the country.
Of the 14 awardees, seven are students from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, the elite magnet program for Northern Virginia.
Read full article >>DCPS to replace 16 principals this fall
D.C. Public Schools officials said this week that 16 schools will open this fall with new principals, roughly matching last year’s leadership turnover.
Officials would not discuss reasons for individual principals’ departures, saying only that some are resigning or retiring, and others have received letters of “non-appointment” — another way of saying they’ve been fired.
Read full article >>The toll high-stakes tests take on non-traditional learners (and their teachers)
Bobbi Snow is the co-founder of The Community Public Charter School, an arts-infused, literacy-focused school for non-traditional learners in Charlottesville, Va., open to all Albemarle County middle school students. Snow wrote the following piece while recently proctoring Virginia's high-stakes Standards of Learning exams, which students took over a period of three weeks. The tests about which she writes were math and science, each with 60 questions. At Snow's school the tests are untimed. Students, who get lots of snacks to fortify them, take the exams in small groups, though Snow wrote in an email, "they still get so disregulated."
New report cards confuse parents across the country, not just in Montgomery County
Parents in Montgomery County aren’t the only ones struggling to understand the new standards-based report cards that replace traditional A, B, C, D letter grades with different codes.
At least one parent in Fairfax County said recent changes to progress reports in her child’s school system has left her confused too.
Read full article >>The Learning Network Blog: Poetry Pairing | 'The Day'
